Week 5 Wide Receiver Matchup Chart

Week 5 Wide Receiver Matchup Chart

At Pro Football Focus, we have player data you simply can’t find anywhere else.

Today, I’m going to share more of that data.

Down below is a chart that matches up wide receivers with cornerbacks. Quite often, we see many casual football fans simply assume that elite cornerbacks follow the opposing team’s No. 1 wide receiver around the field. That almost never actually happens. The below chart will help you determine which cornerbacks your top receivers will see in coverage each week. As you’ll see, it’s not always cut and dry, but we hope this information will allow you to make the best lineup decisions each week.

Understanding the chart:

The chart is split into three “zones”. The first is Left Wide Receiver (LWR) vs. Right Cornerback (RCB). The second is the exact opposite. The third matches up primary slot recievers with primary slot defenders. The percentage shown is how often the player has lined up in that position so far this season. In some cases, the number is very high and telling. In others, it’s low and predictable. Other times it’s low because of injury/depth chart movement. For example, Harry Douglas moved all over the field in Week 3 against Tampa Bay, but he ran most of his routes at RWR, which is injured Roddy White’s primary position. Douglas, in turn, only shows up at 12% at RWR. When White returns (likely next week), Douglas will be in the slot and the percentage will be much higher.

Next to each defender, you’ll see three additional columns.

One is ‘T/G’, which refers to targets faced-per-game.

The second is ‘Cov’, which refers to the coverage grade given to each defender by our fine analysts at PFF. Most don’t know what qualifies as a good or bad coverage grade, which is why it’s on a 0-to-100 scale. 100 is bad and means its a great (A+) matchup for the receiver. Zero means good coverage and is thus bad news (F) for the receiver. 50 is, of course, an average matchup.

The third column is ‘FP’, which identifies how each defender has fared in terms of fantasy points (ppr) per target so far this season.Only defenders who have seen five-plus targets this season are graded. This is also on a 1-to-100 scale.

Most of us fantasy-football gamers are well aware of which wide receivers are elite, but we aren’t quite as familiar with many cornerbacks. These columns help solve that issue.

wouldn’t this be so much easier to use if we sorted by the relevant columns rather than alphabetically by team?

thalooch

or clickable/sortable, but u can also just use “ctrl+f” to find your player.

gutsman004

Very useful info and thankful to have it!

hambone145

So if someone was trying to decide between Kelvin Benjamin and Keenan Allen, would you be more inclined to start Allen given his CB has a COV of 58 (but only 37 FP) versus Benjamin whose CB has a COV of 30 (but 45 FP)?

CebuBound

I am missing something… for instance Ashlon Jeffery lines up as the LWR 34% of the time. What is he doing the other 66% of the time? I would have expected to see his name in the RWR list or Slot.

What filter are you using that limits the list of WRs to only 30ish per table?

When you grade cornerbacks do you take into account of either the quality of previous WRs or QBs they have played against or just a grade based on how the WR did?
Thks
Rob